Friday, June 5, 2015

Why ARE so many women teachers seducing boy pupils?

Teaching assistant Helen Turnbull

Two summers ago, I got a text out of the blue from a teacher friend asking me to meet her ‘urgently’.

It came as a surprise — I hadn’t heard from Sarah for a while and we didn’t socialise very often — but I assumed she wanted my advice on staff room politics, or to tell me about a new man. She’d always had a fairly chaotic love life.

On her arrival, I noticed she’d lost quite a lot of weight and there was a slightly manic air about her, but that wasn’t necessarily abnormal for a teacher during term-time.

Yet after her third glass of wine, she burst into floods of tears — and to my complete horror told me she’d been having an affair with a sixth-form student.

He was 17, she in her late 20s, and they were ‘in love’, she said, ignoring my revulsion.
She’d decided to confess to me because I’d left teaching earlier that year and she had a notion that this would somehow make me less judgmental.

Her tale was torrid: it began with gentle flirting in the classroom, progressed to chatting on email and social media, descended into a drunken snog after prom night and culminated in a weekend away in Brighton. They were now ‘seeing each other’ in secret while discussing a future together.

I was tempted to wash my hands of her there and then, I was so disgusted. My first instinct was to report her to her school’s headmaster. But, for some reason, I didn’t. (more...)